Urban Sketcher Going Into Hibernation

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Larry Marshall

I’ve talked about how hard it is for me to transition from street sketcher to indoor sketcher every winter and that saga continues. I’m starting to think, though, that my situation this year is a bit different. I say this because the depth of my ‘doldrums,’ as I’ve called them are far deeper than normal and I believe the reason is that I’m also at a point where I want to shift gears a bit, take it up a notch, move outside my comfort zone, or whatever euphemism fits.

As the summer has worn on I’ve also started thinking about watercolors beyond using them like crayons and I want to learn how how those brush things work. I’ve been so concentrated on learning to draw that I’ve completely ignored color, viewing it as an after-the-fact thing. I also want to extend/expand my visual brain, improving my visual memory, textures vocabulary, ability to see half-tones, etc. This stuff is hard and requires at a shift in my activity. Couple this with the outdoor->indoor shift that’s taking place at this time of year and my poor, very old brain, is just a bit confused, maybe even intimidated. Getting it to act seems hard right now.

I talked a bit with my buddy Yvan and he suggested that I get up in the morning and do “something simple.” He’s also been telling me forever that I should draw from imagination, not by drawing dragons but by drawing things I’ve seen, or at least representative of things I’ve seen. He suggests this will change the way I see the things I draw even when I’m on location. Since he’s rarely been wrong when it comes to things “art,” I think he’s right about this as well.

Note the wrinkles as the photocopy paper rebelled against the quick swipes of watercolor

And so, this morning, I got up, grabbed a piece of photocopy paper (does this mean I haven’t completely bought into the idea?) and I did a quick drawing of a lamppost coming out of a pile of sunflowers that I saw on Ile d’Orleans this summer. I’m sure it’s not completely accurate but I think it’s close to the real thing. Most of all, I felt a process I’ve never felt before, a questioning of how big/small things were, how one thing related to another and I think this is the stuff Yvan was talking about.

I sipped some coffee and thought some about what I’d just done, which in turned caused me to grab another sheet of photocopy paper and I started doing really quick sketches of the lamp using a bunch of different pens. No attempt was made to be accurate as mostly I was thinking about how each pen felt and what kind of line did it make. I include it here just to document this journey, not that it is anything worthy of looking at.

Winter may not be such a bad thing for me at this point. I’m going to try to set up a “studio,” which for me amounts to having some sort of uncluttered surface and I’m going to experiment, draw from memory, and maybe even train my visual memory. I’m starting to get excited by the prospects.

Oh…while I’m writing, here’s a quick sketch I did from Marc Taro Holmes new book on being a concept artist. Marc’s version is much better (grin). I hope to talk about this book soon.

Trying To Sketch Cirque D’Soleil Wannabes

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Larry Marshall

[Note: I wrote this last week and forgot to push the “publish” button. Here it is, albeit it’s a bit of old news]

Once a year I have a very humbling sketching experience. Actually, I have a lot of those but this annual event is particularly impactful. A group of us go to the local École de Cirque, a circus school in an old church, to sketch the circus students while they practice. Quite separate from sketching, it’s a very exciting time because the main hall is full of trampolines, trapezes, and open areas where these very talented people practice their trade. If nothing else it informs your brain that hard work is the road to being “talented.”

Done with Lamy ink, melted with a waterbrush. These were 'warm ups' before we actually entererd the hall.

Done with Lamy ink, melted with a waterbrush. These were ‘warm ups’ done before we actually entererd the hall.

For me to begin sketching at the École de Cirque is hard for two reasons. The first is that I’m simply mesmerized by what is before me. There was a juggler who was balancing a ring on his head while juggling several other rings, passing smaller ones through the ring on his head as he juggled. He was amazing.

The other reason I have a hard time is that it’s just soooooo hard. I’m not good at sketching people anyway, but I can hold my own when sketching people who are sitting or standing and I even have a good chance at capturing people wandering around in a shopping center. In all these cases, though, I have points of reference. Feet on the ground, heads above feet… at least that. But in the case of circus performers I don’t even have that and I get very confused, very quickly.

I switched to a Duke 209 (fude pen) and waterproof ink. I struggle with fude pens but wanted to give them another try. Color was added after the fact and in somewhat haphazard fashion I confess.

There’s another thing and I wonder if I’m the only one who struggles with this. I can’t convince my brain that I actually have time to sketch these people. My brain seems to decide that if I can’t do the sketch in 10-15 seconds, I can’t do a sketch, which is untrue, even with the performers moving around so much. But my brain directs me to give up completely on size and proportion estimation and to just start scribbling – the end result being people that look like space aliens or melted people. I’m sharing some of these with you as an example of poor sketches that were a lot of fun to do. Too often I think fun and product get tied too closely together by many. They have nothing to do with one another.

Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover (5.5x8.5) sketchbook was used for all these sketches. I really love this format for doing this sort of sketching

Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover (5.5×8.5) sketchbook was used for all these sketches. I really love this format for doing this sort of sketching.

Somehow, during the page above I decided that a divide and conquer strategy was in order, or maybe I was just fascinated how the well-muscled athletes provided a great opportunity to do “life drawing” while muscles were being exercised. That turned out to be a lot of fun.

In the end, I had a bunch of sketchbook pages and memories. Memories of how amazing these people were; memories of how hard it was for me to draw them, and memories of how much fun sketching is even if it’s not going as well as I’d like. I thought it only fitting for me to share these pages with you. I hope all of you are saying “I can do better than that” (grin)

Book Review: 5-Minute Sketching – People By Pete Scully

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Larry Marshall

One of the first urban sketchers I started trying to mimic was Pete Scully. When I was getting started in sketching he was creating small building portraits (often two to a page in Moleskine watercolor sketchbooks). He also got me hooked on drawing fire hydrants and I continue to learn from his sketches.

Today, though, I want to talk about Pete’s new book, 5-Minute Sketching: People. It’s part of what may become a series from Firefly books. When I reviewed Liz Steel’s book in this series I made some comments about how structured, and to my mind limiting, the publisher-dictated format was and if you haven’t read that review I encourage you to do do so here.

While some of those limitations do affect discussion of sketching people, I think it’s less limiting than for sketching buildings for a couple reasons. I think, far more real-time people sketching is done in less than 5-minutes than is building sketching and, for so many people, quick-sketching is so foreign that there are a lot of useful tips one can provide that are quite separate from the actual drawing itself. Pete does a great job of talking about how to capture people quickly, how to put yourself in good positions to do so, and how to make those captures interesting.

Section one is titled How To See, and Pete starts out with some basic dimensional anatomy of the human form. There are sections on arms and legs, faces, and all the things you’d expect to find in a ‘how to see humans’ section. This expands into sections regarding quick composition and simple backgrounds, to bring your sketches to life. He talks about playing with perspective and using negative space to position people in a scene as you draw and each of these sections is a series of hints and tips to related to each topic.

Section two is titled Quick On The Draw and here Pete emphasizes the need for speed. His discussions run the gamet from drawing quick portraits to some great tips for drawing a crowd of people quickly. There’s an interesting section on capturing conversation in sketch form and another on how to capture passers-by using compositing ideas and building up your visual memory capabilities. This section, and the next, form the meat and potatoes of the book with a bundle of great ideas, some of which I’ve done, some not… yet.

Section three of the 5-Minute Sketching series is titled Time-Saving Techniques and here Pete emphasizes the use of different line techniques; how to do simple tonal sketching; how to sketch over color and other approaches that help to provide quicker, but more satisfying sketches.

Section four is titled Speedy Supplies and Pete provides series of tips to help when using pencil, pen and ink, markers, pastels, etc. as well as providing some advice on things like paper choice and even a bit on using digital media. I confess that I didn’t get much from this section but I’m fairly myopic in my choice of medium so that’s probably the reason.

While this book won’t teach you how to draw, it should be very helpful for those wanting to get out and draw people on location. If you’ve never done it, it’s a daunting task but Pete’s tips should put your mind at ease and provide a gentle nudge to get you out the door.

Are Sketching Doldrums A Thing?

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Larry Marshall

Every November I go through a down period when it comes to sketching. It’s sort of like I’ve got the clutch disengaged as I change gears. In the meantime my brain is spinning in neutral. My daily outdoor sketching routine comes to an end and I’m waffling around, trying to figure out how I’m going to survive the winter as a sketcher in Quebec City. This year is particularly bad because out provincial ‘austerity’ plan has gutted the budgets of the few local museums in Quebec City and so my typical winter haunts are nearly barren.

But I did meet our tiny group at the main library and we sketched one morning last week so I’ll share those little sketches with you. All were done in my tiny Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5×5.5) softcover sketchbook.

The sketch on the left was the last outdoor sketch I did this year. I was leaning against a wall, trying to keep warm and I drew very quickly, but not quick enough as I gave up before I could start adding any details to it. It’s here only because it’s on the same spread as the sketch on the right which was the first sketch I did at the library. From the 2nd floor of the library you can see this building across the street.

When I finished I went hunting for my fellow sketchers and found them sketching a display in the kid book section. This winter will see me doing a lot of these quick sketches of people. Maybe, with the help of recent books by Pete Scully and Lynne Chapman I’ll figure out how to do them better.

When I finished with those sketches I went looking for a third member of our group and found her upstairs, sketching the street below. She was near to finishing and we were all going to meet for an early lunch, so I quickly did a few more real quick sketches of people who were reading. Here’s two of them.

As I’ve suggested, I’m not sure where my sketching will go this winter. There are several things I’d like to work on this winter and, I suppose, I’ll be doing a bunch of ‘studio’ sketching this winter. Wish I had a studio (grin).

Sketching A Mineral Display

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Larry Marshall

We’re entering sketching winter in Quebec City. This is when the notion of street sketching is absurd and so we’ve got to start looking for hard to find indoor locations to feed our urges to put pen to paper.

I got an email from Claudette telling me about permission she obtained for us to sketch a rock display in the lobby of one of the government buildings. My initial reaction was “huh?” and an assumption that I didn’t understand the French (my default reaction to most things because it is generally true). I love drawing rock cliffs and even piles of rocks but a geologic display of rocks? Didn’t make sense.

I almost didn’t go but I’m glad I did as it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Besides it was warm inside and raining outside. During the morning session I drew three rocks, a green one, an almost clear one, and a yellow one. I’d give you more details about these minerals but that’s all I know. Geology is not my thing. The results aren’t great art but they do represent a lot of fun and I’d love to have another shot at drawing some of these unique and complex shapes.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5x8.5), Platinum 3776

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Platinum 3776